Saturday, 9 May 2015

'Fiela' is a seTswana and seSotho word which means 'to sweep'. I remember
a song from Bloemfontein. A song sung in the context of a wedding. It is the
women who sing it when the bride is supposed to sweep the house of the in-laws:

Fiela fiela fiela ngwanyana fiela ngwanyana o se jele matlakaleng

The meaning is:

Sweep, sweep, sweep, girl Sweep, girl Don't eat in a dirty home

South African authorities have launched ‘operation Fiela’.
It has nothing to do with weddings. Its purpose is to find criminal elements.
More especially criminal elements, who are not South African citizens.

It is rather contradictory. It has been said, that this operation
is done to combat xenophobia. But migrants are the target of the operation.
Yes, criminal migrants. But still.

The police force is trying to fight a battle on two fronts.
They are still dealing with xenophobia and say on their website:

South Africans are encouraged not to make comments that
incite violence against foreign nationals. “Our intelligence services continue
to monitor cyberspace for comments that incite violence against foreign
nationals. People making such comments must know we are coming for them …

But one can also read that:

Operation Fiela, which means “to sweep clean”, continues to
enjoy great support from the public who have come forward with information
about areas where crime is prevalent.

So far the operation has resulted in 889 arrests country
wide. 745 people have been arrested for not having proper documentation, which
means they have been in the country illegally.

The Telegraph writes about police raiding the Central Methodist
Church in Johannesburg, which has been, for many years, a sanctuary for
refugees. I know that Church authorities have wanted to clear the premises from
people living there, because they owe the municipality a lot of money, but so
far people have not moved. The question now is if the Church has asked the
police to come.

Riot police and soldiers bristling with weapons burst into
the Central Methodist Church in Johannesburg on Friday at 4am, where an
estimated 1,000 foreigners, many of them seeking political asylum from Robert
Mugabe's Zimbabwe, live.

It often happens early in the morning and with more force
than necessary. Hence there are also critical voices:

I was born 1960, married 1984 and have five children. I live in Uppsala, Sweden. I am a priest working as a teacher in homiletics at the Church of Sweden Institute for Pastoral Education in Uppsala. I am als an honorary lecturer at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg in South Africa. 2002 - 2006 i lived in Bloemfontein where some speak seTswana. If you want to say priest in that language you say: 'moruti'.